New Zealand: No treatment for some cancers

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- New Zealand says a shortage of oncologists means patients with certain kinds of cancers will not be referred to specialists or be eligible for chemotherapy.

Hospitals in the central North Island have been instructed not to send people suffering a range of 14 cancers to oncologists, the Wellington Dominion Post reported Monday.

MidCentral District Health Board says it does not have enough oncologists, and doctors at local hospitals should not refer patients suffering particular cancers "unless there are active relevant clinical trials or overriding individual circumstance," it said in a letter to physicians.

Patients suffering relapses of some cancers, including cervical and esophagus, are on the list, as are those with melanoma.

"Of course, in a perfect world people would be able to get the very best of everything, but if we have to have a list, this is a good list," Cancer Society chief executive Dalton Kelly said.

Making the list public was a step toward identifying where real treatment shortages were and where in the country there was spare treatment capacity, he said.

"It might not be what we want to hear, but it is honest ... . It is good to know they will not be hiding patients on waiting lists," he said.

The letter, though not confidential, had been intended for clinicians, not the general public, MidCentral operations director Nicholas Glubb said.

Peter Foley, Hawke's Bay District Health Board chief medical officer of primary care, said it was time to be "open and honest" with patients who would not benefit from intensive treatment.

"Understandably, people diagnosed with cancer want to see the top man, the oncologist, but they can't see everyone," he said. "When we are patients we have ... to trust the people looking after us. When a GP tells us an oncologist can't help us, we're going to have to trust him."